SACRED LEGACY ARCHIVES™

Nikolai Tomsky

1900-12-06 – 1984-11-22

Nilolai Tomsky in 1948Credit: unknnown

Life & Legacy

Nikolai Vasilyevich Tomsky (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич То́мский; 19 December [O.S. 6 December] 1900 – 22 November 1984) was a much-decorated Soviet sculptor, designer of many well-known ceremonial monuments of the Socialist Realism era. The sculptor first came to attention with his memorial to Sergei Kirov, a heroic bronze with friezes around the base, for which he won the 1941 Stalin Prize. Thereafter his career developed in an official direction; he would be eventually tasked to re-design Lenin's own sarcophagus, produce Stalin's bust at Stalin's grave at the Moscow Kremlin Wall, and produce at least five major statues of Lenin throughout the Soviet Union. His distinctive red-granite Lenin stood in the Leninplatz of East Berlin from 1970 to 1992.

Occupation & Career

painter, sculptor, designer, artist

Education

St. Petersburg art school by Rerikh N.K.

Accomplishments, Inventions & Publications

Stalin Prize; USSR State Prize; Order of Lenin; Hero of Socialist Labour; Order of the October Revolution; Order of Karl Marx; People's Painter of the USSR; Order of the Red Banner of Labour; Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad"; Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"; Lenin Prize; People's Painter of the RSFSR; Taganrog Lenin Monument

Legacy Highlights

Honors & Awards

Hero of Socialist Labour · Lenin Prize · Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad" · Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" · Order of Karl Marx · Order of Lenin · Order of the October Revolution · Order of the Red Banner of Labour · People's Painter of the RSFSR · People's Painter of the USSR · Stalin Prize · USSR State Prize